Our Vision: Gospel Transformation

Why we exist

We're a movement of people being transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ as He transforms lives and neighborhoods locally and globally. Our vision is that we would be a people who are ongoingly being transformed by his gospel and that Annapolis would be a city where every sphere of culture is experiencing renewal and found flourishing as the city becomes a lighthouse on the water, where guns are melted into gardening tools, where drug dealers sell nectarines instead of narcotics, where the fatherless come home to find their fathers, where the wealthy contribute back to those in need, where diverse communities come together in Jesus. “Annapolis” can loosely be translated as “city of grace.” This is our prayer that the city would be filled with a people full of God’s grace flowing like the city’s waterways.

There are roughly 40,000 people who live in the city of Annapolis and over half a million who live in our county. Five million call the state of Maryland home and there are some sixty million spread across the Mid-Atlantic region. What does this mean? There are a lot of people in our area who are in need of the hope of the gospel. According to the North American Mission Board, 80% of the people living in our corridor of the world aren’t involved in any kind of faith community. Our vision doesn’t stop at the city limits but rather begins there. Collaborating inter-denominationally and with other local churches that proclaim Christ as Lord, we are praying towards a movement of gospel renewal in our region, where lives, neighborhoods, and cities are transformed through reproducing communities of gospel-centered disciples of Jesus.


Our Core Practices Are What We Live

[ How our vision is becoming reality ]

  • Worship

    We Worship in our Gatherings and through every facet of life

  • Fellowship

    We Live in Community through DH Communities + Discipleship Bands

  • Mission

    We Love our City and World through Love Annapolis and Global Missions

  • Equipping

    We Equip to Send Through Seminary Without Walls


Our Values Saturate Everything We Do

[ The flavor of our core: practices as we live them out ]

Downtown Hope is shaped by our shared vision, core-practices, statement of faith, and the values that saturate everything we practice. We will seek to equip, train, teach and bring resources that will help us best align in practice to our shared values described below. These values are fully fleshed out in our Gospel for Life membership and equipping class.

+ The Gospel is Core

We speak and live out of the gospel of grace in everything we do.

+ A Diverse and Empowered Body

We long to bear healthy fruit.

+ Equipped to Engage the 80%

We're a band of disciples who are equipped to form new disciples to reach the disconnected and disengaged of our world.

+ Created to Create

Created in the image of God we consider beauty and experimentation in everything we design and implement.

+ Bound to Scripture and the Spirit

Our authority is the Scripture, our power from the Holy Spirit.

+ Permeating Prayer

In everything, we ask and listen to our Father in Heaven.